Wall Street’s Scale Limits the Pace of Global Portfolio Diversification

Brasilia, 2 September 2026 – Investors have mounting reasons to diversify away from United States assets, yet the scale and infrastructure of Wall Street continue to limit how quickly global capital can relocate. The central constraint is not the absence of alternatives but whether other markets can absorb, hedge and settle trillions of dollars without destabilising prices, yields and currencies.

The US dollar accounted for 56.8% of allocated global foreign-exchange reserves at the end of 2025 and appeared on one side of 89.2% of surveyed currency trades. Those shares reflect economic size, legal protections, innovative companies and network effects, but they are also sustained by the depth of the financial system surrounding US securities.